Emerging from a Martha Living

This winter’s Narcissus Paperwhites – which bloomed right before Christmas!

I sauteed chicken in butter, a bit of oil, minced garlic cloves, summer savory, and the juice of a lemon tonight – and served it over a bowl of spaghetti, sprinkled with Romano cheese. I made it up as I went along. The boys, those left at home, raced for refills – not against each other, but their stomachs.

It was the best I’d made, they’d said.

They each wanted more – and I made sure there was more than enough. I’ve missed being able to cook like that, to create simple dishes that grow smiles. Not in a Martha-kind of way, but a Mary-kind of way.

The Christmas holiday was a flu-filled holiday, from beginning to end. Despite the Tamiflu, it caught me Christmas Eve – 101+ degree fever. The married son, his expectant wife and my granddaughter took a rain check for Muffaletta Christmas Eve. At Mid-night, my husband and I finished setting out the gifts and filling the stockings – and he prayed for me, prayed healing for me. There’s blessing in that – the prayer of a husband for his wife.

I grabbed hold of that prayer, the promise of Christmas Eve of a Savior born in a manger, come to save us and heal us.

“I believe. I believe. I believe,” I prayed all night long.

Christmas morning, I woke, feeling energetic, strong – and able to fix my grandmother’s Christmas Breakfast Casserole for my youngest. It’s his very favorite – so much his very favorite that all he wanted for his birthday was Christmas Breakfast.

Christmas Dinner was the Muffaletta’s we were supposed to have Christmas Eve.

It was unlike any Christmas I’ve ever experienced. That evening, my temperature went back up.

The entire holiday was like that – fevers, flu, tiredness, like mis-matched pieces to a puzzle. The unexpected Christmas gift was not so much the flu. It was change.

I felt it all around, change, like a seed before it emerges through the soil, into the brave, above-ground world, the faith of that seed to trust it’s creator that it is prepared for what is on the other side of the dark divide.

. . . a seed before it emerges . . .

. . . . that’s where I am, right now . . .

Life is full of those kinds of moments – of change emerging, both big and little, both event and daily.

Right now, it’s as though I’m at an empasse in an everyday Martha-Living with an opportunity to emerge into another way of living, an everyday Mary-Living.

“The Master said, “Martha, dear Martha, you’re fussing far too much and getting yourself worked up over nothing. One thing only is essential, and Mary has chosen it—it’s the main course, and won’t be taken from her”(Luke 10: 41-42).

I wonder how Martha felt? Was it too much of a change, to give up works for grace? To trust that everything would take care of itself in the right time, without “fussing far too much and getting worked up over nothing”? – that brushed with grace, Muffalettas for Christmas Dinner instead of the traditional huge spread fulfill heart-needs?

When God is in the change,
more than enough results.
When God orchestrates the change,
works are exchanged for grace
like a seed before the moment of an emerge
. . . . a change offered for grace . . .
still in the darkness,
holding out hope and faith hands
for Him to pull me through right!

(Last year’s Narcissus Paperwhites never emerged to bloom. This year, all tree of them bloomed. I took it as a letter of encouragement from a loving Father!)

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The Winter of a Prayer Journey

Purple Iris and tangerine and lemon-colored lily bulbs burrow, roots reaching down for warmth in my Tennessee red-clay garden. The once rioutous pink, blue, purple and yellow flowers have retreated to their roots, and butterfly lures are just clacking sticks in the wind.

Winter is a faith-is-the-substance-of-things-hoped-for,-the evidence-of-things-not-seen” kind of season.

The deceiver tries to hood-wink stray thoughts into believing it’s a dead time, a separated-from-God time.

Winter from 753-717 B.C. was nameless – no January and February – just gaping, no-name nothingness (50 Ways Italian Genius Shaped the World, Sprezzatura). I don’t know about you, but it tests my resolve, my confidence – when I cannot put a name to something – like the knocking sounds in the basement or when one son’s stomach hurt for 5 years, or when we didn’t know if our only child would turn into an older brother.

Not knowing is hard.

Not knowing is a winter-time season of a prayer sent out, like a nameless January and February.

Each Winter asks us to wait.

Each Winter demands faith.

Paperwhite bulbs on the sill remind me to have faith.

Snow falling is a faith dance from heaven to where I am, reminding me He hasn’t forgotten me in the winter of a prayer journey – where things are happening that I just don’t see.

But He does. He sees. And prayer returning will burst forth into riotous blooms – maybe not quite what I thought I was planting, but more wonderful than I imagined.

Something powerful is going on in this seeming nothingness of long nights, cold paths that don’t invite long walks, air that tingles against cheeks as if saying – “Go back in. We’re not ready for you, yet.”

Winters are for discipline or grace or extravagant love – and the emerging spring of a prayer answered is more beautiful because of it!

“He orders the snow, ‘Blanket the earth!’
    and the rain, ‘Soak the whole countryside!’
No one can escape the weather—it’s there.
    And no one can escape from God.
Wild animals take shelter,
    crawling into their dens,
When blizzards roar out of the north
    and freezing rain crusts the land.
It’s God’s breath that forms the ice,
    it’s God’s breath that turns lakes and rivers solid.
And yes, it’s God who fills clouds with rainwater
    and hurls lightning from them every which way.
He puts them through their paces—first this way, then that—
    commands them to do what he says all over the world.
Whether for discipline or grace or extravagant love,
    he makes sure they make their mark” (Job 37: 6-13)

 

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